1

I am dealing with a distributed application which is going to mange a network of Linux-based servers spread among different places. Having the SSH credentials (as the most supported connection mechanism on these servers) we need to deploy our application seamlessly on these servers and run it there to become an new node on our network. Moreover we don't have and don't want super user rights. This is basically a requirement in a scientific environment to run simulations on a network of resources.

Is there any well known approach to such a problem?

l0b0
11.6k2 gold badges45 silver badges49 bronze badges
asked Sep 22, 2014 at 13:06

2 Answers 2

1

Fabric can be used to run basic deployment commands (and configuration management tools such as Puppet or Chef) for a very nice SSH-based deployment process.

answered Sep 22, 2014 at 13:12
5
  • This is an open source project so I can't use Puppet or Chef, however Fabric sounds good. Commented Sep 22, 2014 at 14:05
  • Huh? Puppet and Chef are open source, aren't they? Commented Sep 22, 2014 at 15:18
  • Maybe my mistake, but the websites are not clear enough. Puppets shows me "Buy" option and Chef shows me plans to choose between, however there was a "manage yourself" in Chef website but I did not find the license information. Commented Sep 22, 2014 at 15:21
  • 1
    "Open source" and "free" are not the same thing... Commented Sep 22, 2014 at 15:33
  • 1
    They don't make it easy to find the FOSS version of Puppet, which is a shame as CentOS never exactly hurt RedHat sales. If its not already in your distro's repositories, then you can get it from PuppetLab's own. Commented Sep 22, 2014 at 16:14
2

If you don't need additional layer such as Fabric:

  • Copy files to the server using scp, including the script to run,

  • Run the script through ssh.

In both cases, make sure you don't store SSH password anywhere, but use a pair of private/public keys.

answered Sep 22, 2014 at 13:18
3
  • What I need is installing python virtualenv and proper libs which may need compiling (or I may use cross compiling) and then run the software. Do you think this can be done with scp and ssh only? Commented Sep 22, 2014 at 14:09
  • Totally. Write a bash script which does that, upload the script and launch it with ssh. Commented Sep 22, 2014 at 14:46
  • 1
    @MehdiSadeghi: There's a Puppet module for virtualenv which works well. Commented Sep 22, 2014 at 18:46

Your Answer

Draft saved
Draft discarded

Sign up or log in

Sign up using Google
Sign up using Email and Password

Post as a guest

Required, but never shown

Post as a guest

Required, but never shown

By clicking "Post Your Answer", you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.